What’s your story?

By Steven Boyd Saum

Photo by Charles Barry

April 22, 2014

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A thank-you. A request. And 100,000 reasons to go in for SCU on April 23.

Let’s start with this: Everybody savors a good story. Maybe it’s told in a single photo of a face in profile (worth 1,000 words, right?) or a tale of a scientist who saved a child’s life, a student who helped free an innocent man from prison, a brilliant young woman just out of college and ready to rock the world with her startup, a humble priest and scholar whose teaching and advising and ministry blessed this place for half a century, and how many stories are intertwined with his? Stories that leave you inspired or breathless or amazed, saying, How cool is that!

Stories about Santa Clara University—the place and the people who keep it living, breathing, growing—are what shape Santa Clara Magazine. Four times a year, the magazine reaches more than 90,000 readers in print. Through the digital magazine, which includes new stories every week, the Santa Clara story reaches around the world. All that’s made possible through support from folks like you.

So, thank you.

Looking for a reason? Here are 100,000.

Then there’s this: A gift to the magazine, no matter the size, helps ensure that we can tell stories with breadth and depth, through writing and images that are lively and compelling. And here’s a reason—actually, 100,000 reasons—to make a small gift to support the mag or your favorite project and program at SCU on April 23: If 1,001 Santa Clara grads make a gift to the University on that very day, thoughtful and generous Julie Robson ’83 and Mark Robson ’84 will donate another $100,000. Here’s the headline for the date: The Power of One Day.

Last year in Santa Clara Magazine, we took you on an epic journey with “Walk Across California.” We asked some big questions, like, “Yes, but is it the right thing to do?”—a phrase that has shaped the largest university-based ethics center in the world. (That would be right here on the Mission Campus.) In our spring edition, just out, we take you to Myanmar and Afghanistan, and we look at what the Dalai Lama had to say here in Silicon Valley to business leaders and students and thousands more. A hint: It’s about compassion and ethics.

Story update on April 24, 2014: Here’s a nice surprise: For the Power of One Day, more than 2,800 fans of Santa Clara stories big and small chipped in. Which meant hitting the goal for the first challenge gift and a second challenge gift for another $100,000 made by a 1969 grad who would prefer to remain anonymous. And which will feed and water the stories that sprout in all sorts of interesting places around this campus, and where the students and scholars and makers go out into the world. So, thanks again.